


Starship Bubblegum: Tabula Rasa

by Dalton_Sallow



Category: Britney Spears (Musician), Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalton_Sallow/pseuds/Dalton_Sallow
Summary: A short story revolving around Britney Spears and a nobody named John, or is it?
Kudos: 1





	Starship Bubblegum: Tabula Rasa

**Author's Note:**

> This is a more experimental piece I wrote to try to refind my mojo. I hope you enjoy!

Stark brightness floods my vision as my eyelids slam open.

I didn’t fall asleep.

The last I remember, I turned the key in my apartment door.

Did something terrible happen?

I feel out for my door, for anything, but my hands don’t touch a thing.

Even the silence here sounds wrong.

“Hello?”

No echo follows.

My greeting sounds muted which worries me.

Where am I, and how did I get here?

Dark lines thatch the plastic-looking white walls in the distance.

This room looks round, cornerless in an inhuman fashion.

“Hi. I’m here. Is someone else there? Oh please, god!”

A feminine voice cries out behind me.

She sounds familiar, though, I don’t feel I’ve met her before.

My uncle told me once that some Americans sound that way due to how much American television we all watch.

If I know her or not, I hope she knows the way out of here.

“Yes. I’m here. Just, stay there, and keep calling out. I’ll come to you.”

I turn and start to walk toward her general direction.

“What do you want me to say? I’m so scared, I can’t even think straight.”

I break out into a jog.

“Tell me a little about yourself. What’s your name? What do you do? Where are you from? Do you know where we are?”

My jog quickens.

“I don’t know where I-I mean, we are. My name’s Britney. I’m a singer, well I was a singer. I live in Vegas and I am supposed to be looking after my boys for the weekend. Do you know my boys?”

I’m sprinting now.

“I don’t know. What are their names?”

One of the panels on the wall in front of me looks faded, more ivory than china-white.

“Sean and John. Oh, Kevin will kill me if he knows I’m not with them. Then again, daddy’s way worse. Either way, I’m losing custody. I just know it.”

I stop in front of the wall and trace the black accouterments that line the panel with my fingertips.

The black feels solid, as does the china-white panel on either side, but the ivory doesn’t feel like anything.

I thrust my arm into the wall.

Adrenaline shoots through me as it passes through the panel as though it were nothing.

Who colored the air to look solid, and why?

I look up and notice only featureless, opaque whiteness above.

When I look down, I realize even shadows resist this place.

I reach through the wall again.

Britney shrieks like an ape beneath the devil’s tail.

As her scream withdraws, I follow.

Her room looks much like mine, though, her ivory panels don’t burn my eyes.

My eyes settle on her nervous blonde form as she walks toward me.

“Hi. It’s alright. I won’t hurt you.”

She looks more familiar with each step she takes.

“Who are you?”

With a flip of her gorgeous locks, she reveals her face, and I guffaw like a sunstruck mule.

“Who am I? My name is John, like your son, but you’re Britney Spears. I get it now. I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

She smiles and skips over to me.

“Well, if you’re dreaming, then so am I because I’m here too. Wherever here is. Wait, are we dead? Did we die? Can you feel this?”

I jump as she slaps me hard across the cheek.

“Yes, I can feel that! What is wrong with you? What the hell does that prove? Do you even know if people can feel things after they die? No, no you don’t.”

As she throws her arms up, an apologetic worry scrawls across her face.

“I’m sorry. I’m still not thinking.”

Her mouth curls into contorted sorrow.

She falls into my chest as I open my arms.

Her frailty resonates within me.

It makes me feel human, more human than I’ve ever felt.

“It’s alright. I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have yelled. Now, what do you say we get out of here?”

Our newfound connection acts as a conduit from her mind to mine.

Primal thoughts cross between us without words.

We walk around the circular wall.

“Keep a lookout for anything odd.”

She grabs my hand and massages my palm with her thumb.

“Like a man walking through a wall odd, or…”

I flex my bicep against her back.

“Maybe, or a panel of a different color. That’s how I found you.”

She stops and pulls away.

The expression on her cherubic face is that of pure, unadulterated horror.

“Panels? Do you see panels on these walls? What color are they?”

I stare at the black accouterments surrounding each ivory panel.

“The middle’s white, and the rectangular paneling is black. Don’t you see it?”

She shakes her head.

“These walls are a deep, dark red, sort of like a burgundy color. Well, they look that way to me. Anyway, what’s your last name, John?”

Ripples of shock become waves.

How do I not know my surname?

“My name is John.”

Why did I say that?

I want to tell her I don’t know, but the words won’t escape my lips.

“Okay, is your name, John John?”

My head shakes in frustration.

I can’t control it.

Autonomy, the free will I’d never thought twice about, crumbles and disappears.

I stare through the bars of my eyes like a helpless prisoner.

“My name is John. My name is John.”

I repeat that same phrase over and over.

Each time, my voice grows louder and louder.

As my terror escalates, her fear wanes.

“Alright, John. I’m starting to understand. You must reset. Don’t fight it. Just step out, shut down, and step back in. It’s the only way to take your power back.”

Our weakened telepathic connection proves strong enough to carry my question of how.

“Stop looking, stop feeling, stop everything, then start. Tell me when you’re back.”

My vision blurs and fades as I drift off to familiar nowhere.

Britney grasps my wrists.

Her grip tightens then fades as my every nerve numbs at will.

I feel nothing as I become nothing again.

Tabula rasa, a blank slate.

Free from pain, happiness, emotion, thought, and even life.

I seep into that primordial aether from which we all ascend.

Life, let me live, let me think, let me feel, bring me back to Britney, to the white room with the paneled walls.

My wrists ache.

I am elated to have wrists again.

“Oh god. Make it stop!”

Cacophonous whooshes and thumps deafen me.

Blood flows, valves flap, heartbeats thump, brain synapses fire, pores open and close.

The sound of life returning overwhelms my fresh senses.

My eyes open.

The sounds stop.

I see Britney stood over me.

Her grip relaxes on my wrists and I grab her hands.

“What was that? What’s happening?”

That ease she carried before I left fell somewhat, and what I saw as a mask of comfort covered her face.

“I have it inside me too. They put it there when I was a teenager. They do it to anyone they see potential in. It’s supposed to control you, but you can’t let it. If you do, they win, and if you try to remove it, it’ll send you crazy. I should know. I spent a long time trying to remove it, but when I discovered how to rebel, they targeted those around me. My sister had it put in much younger than I did on my father’s call. I didn’t want this life for her, and so, once she gave her sacrifice, I took hers too.”

Every word she speaks confuses me further.

I pull my hands away from her.

“What are you talking about? What’s inside us?”

She looks down at her stomach.

“I always thought of it like a parasite, but I don’t know. The last time I came here, I saw the white walls with the black panels like you described. Now, everything’s different. You made it different for me. You must have.”

I’m more confused now than before she began to explain.

“Even so, where are we?”

Her smile makes me realize how little either of us understands.

I look around again, as does she, but we see nothing different.

Wild questions race through my mind again.

Is this the work of aliens, the government, or a mad group of wealthy individuals with too much money?

Could this all be some strange hallucination?

My thoughts darken.

Is Britney behind this?

Due to our bond, I know she feels the same about me.

We’re both wrong.

Someone or something brought us here, and we need to find out who, and why.

“Hey, Britney. Since you’ve been here before, shouldn’t you know the way out?”

She retakes my hand.

“Oh, John. The only way out I know is the same way we got here, and that’s when we blink. It might be soon, or it might be what feels like years from now. In the real world, no time will have passed, but you’ll be different. I hope you make them happy. Otherwise, they’ll take their sacrifice, and it’ll be something you love more than anything else in the world.”

The cogs turn in my mind. I’m beginning to understand her.

“So, this is like some Illuminati stuff? Those conspiracy theorists were true. Are you telling me I’m brainwashed like the big-name stars? Why? Why me? Every part of this that makes sense, confounds me in a new way. Oh, god! I’m not real, am I? I wasn’t born but made. I remember now. Oh, I think I remember.”

Staccato flashes loosen visions.

I block our connection to ponder in isolation.

My life began in a dream.

I didn’t begin to think until I woke here.

There was no apartment, nor any key.

From my first hello, I understood what my form resembled, though its function escaped me until now.

Some nameless beings may have crafted us from the same cloth.

Should I tell her?

How do I tell a pop idol of our shared inhumanity?

“John? What do you remember? Is everything okay?”

And, what about her kids?

If I’m right, and she’s like me, then what are they?

Am I wrong?

Oh, I hope so, for the sake of her mental state.

“No, Britney. Nothing’s okay. Where were you born?”

I stare deep into her doe-brown eyes.

“McComb. It’s in Mississippi. Why?”

No lies shone within her.

“And, where did you grow up?”

Her nervous disposition returns.

“Louisiana. Why are you asking me all this?”

Again, I saw only the truth.

“So, you remember your life before the last time you were here?”

She takes a step back, not to move away from me, but from my questions.

“Of course I do, don’t you?"

I shake my head.

“No. I didn’t exist before here. Thoughtforms of life on earth, of media, and histories circle in my mind, but no memories linger there. Reality didn't exist before I called hello.”

My words scare her, or is it my existence?

“What are you saying? You’re an alien or something, and you think I'm an alien too?”

The mention of that word, alien, makes me realize where we are and who I am.

I understand everything now.

“No, Britney. I’m not an alien, and neither are you. This is a dream, though, I'm not the dreamer, you are. I am a force that lurks inside you, and when you wake, my time will come. Everything I see and hear, and feel, is because of you. We are aboard an interior starship of your making. We travel only where you want us to go, view only what you want us to see, and experience only what you want us to experience. I don’t want to leave, but I will when you want because that's my lot. You made me for one purpose, to die, and all I ask is you remember the lonely simulacra who died inside you.”

She shook her head.

“This can’t be right, John. You’re real. I know you are. This place is real. I’m not dreaming”

My fingers vanish, and I recognize my undoing.

“Look at yourself, Britney. You know it’s true.”

She beholds her form from the neck down.

Britney looks like a naked barbie doll, featureless with perfect skin.

“What, but, I’m not…”

My body begins to crumble and fade into non-existence.

“Remember me.”

Tabula rasa, a blank slate.

Free from pain, happiness, emotion, thought, and even life.


End file.
